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It’s game on for Walt Disney Animation Studios. The new 3D computer animated movie Wreck-It Ralph offers a nostalgic and heartfelt journey through the history of video games. The movie weaves an original story that constantly connects this fictional world with real game characters from four decades of interactive entertainment.

Although director Rich Moore is making his feature film debut with this movie, he’s spent many years finding ways to make people laugh as a supervising producer for Matt Groening’s Futurama and The Simpsons franchises. He also knows a lot about video games, having played just about every game ever made. Moore explains how he fit so many game cameos in the film and talks about a potential movie sequel in this exclusive interview. The movie had its Hollywood premiere last night and opens at the box office on November 2.

How hard was it to get all those video game characters in the movie?

Easy. Next question. I’m sure the Disney lawyers would say it was really hard, because they had mounds of paper work, I’m sure, to fill out on each one.

Did people come to you?

No, we went to the people. I would introduce myself and say, “My name is Rich Moore. I’m making this animated film about video games, the characters in them, and what they do when they’re off the clock. We would be amiss not to have your character in the movies, since these games are such seminal games. This is how we’d like to use them.”

I would pitch through the scenes that the characters appeared in. Nine times out of ten they would say, “That’s great. Yes, we want to be a part of this.” In a way it was easy, but in a way it also took a lot of preparation in going and meeting and just being honest about how we wanted to use their characters.

I look at it this way, at Disney, if someone came to our studio and said, “We want to use Mickey Mouse, I would want to know how they’re going to use Mickey Mouse in their piece.” So I just made it abundantly clear what the intentions were. Like I say, most of the time we would get a really positive response.

How did this film compare to working on your animated TV shows?

I would say the biggest difference is in TV, everything is very fast paced. You have to nail it the first or second time. When you’re making a show like The Simpsons or Futurama, you’re always behind the 8-ball, having to catch up and shift something somewhere. So there’s not a whole lot of time to hone things. You’re just kind of, “bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.” You’re coming out of the gate firing.

This is more day-to-day. You let ideas gestate a little bit longer. You sit with things. It’s a lot more living with the project, unlike TV, which is running with it and trying to cross the finish line. I think that that’s where that kind of profound nature comes from in the Pixar movies, where they really feel like they’ve been thought out deeply, because they have been. People have really searched and turned every stone looking for the best way to present the movie.

What’s it like knowing that Ralph is going into a real video game with a Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed?

Surreal would come to mind. When they came to us and asked us, it was like, “Are you kidding me? Yes, please! How much do I have to pay you to put him in there?” It’s amazing. Ralph is this character that you sit with and create, and it’s about video games, but then it’s like going into a real video game. It’s the highest compliment ever that we’re actually going to be part of something like that. I love the Sonic games, so for me it’s like, “Pinch me.” I can’t believe it. I love those guys over at Sega.

And this convergence works both ways with Sonic being in the movie and all of the advertising.

Yeah. Sonic’s in the movie, so it’s like this great kind of cross-pollination of these two properties. I look forward to more of that. I love it. I think it’s a huge honor to be included in something like that. It’s a big title, too, so I hope we live up to Sega’s high ideals of games.

What opportunities do you see in the Wreck-It Ralph universe expanding through new video games moving ahead?

I think should we be so lucky to do a sequel, I think it would be great to explore online gaming and home games. We have some ideas of how we could do that. It was fun to begin it in an arcade, and I think that that really tapped into the nostalgia that that has attached to it. If we were to do a sequel, I think we need to bring it up-to-date, so we’re working on ideas that would bring it into modern gaming, not just arcade cabinets.